Annual Joint Request to Industry for Residues Monitoring Data from the Pesticide Residues Committee and Veterinary Residues Commitee
6 March 2008
Please reply by 25 April 2008
Please reply to
For pesticide residues:
- Ms Louise Rawlings, Secretariat, Pesticide Residues Committee, Room 308, Mallard House, 3 Peasholme Green, York YO1 7PX
- Tel 01904 455751
- Fax 01904 455733
- E-mail: prc@hse.gsi.gov.uk
For veterinary residues:
- Mr David Webb, Secretariat, Veterinary Residues Committee, Woodham Lane, New Haw, Addlestone, Surrey, KT15 3LS
- Tel 01932 338327
- Fax 01932 336618
- E-mail: d.webb@vmd.defra.gsi.gov.uk
Including industry residue monitoring information in our Annual Reports for 2007
The Pesticide Residues Committee (PRC) and Veterinary Residues Committee (VRC) oversee the Government’s surveillance programmes for pesticide residues and veterinary residues respectively. UK and imported foodstuffs and feedstuffs are tested to make sure pesticides and veterinary medicines are being used correctly. We check that the concentrations of any residues detected are not above legal and safety limits and, in particular, that any residues found do not put people’s health at risk.
The Committees know that you in the food production and supply industries are also committed to this objective. We would appreciate receiving the results of any surveillance or analysis programmes of food and drink or animal feed for pesticide or veterinary residues that you have undertaken in 2007.
We would like to include the information in the PRC and VRC 2007 Annual Reports. Publicising results demonstrates to the general public that the arrangements for checking for pesticide and veterinary residues are comprehensive. It also provides a central source of intelligence for Government and Industry to use when planning future checks.
The types of information that we would like to receive and the formats preferred by the two committees are given in Annexes I – III (Excel spreadsheet, 22KB). Although it is helpful to have the information summarised in these formats, this is not a requirement and we appreciate any information supplied in whatever format.
Any information you supply will be published anonymously so that its origin cannot be identified. If you have information you would like to share with us but do not want us to publish, please clearly mark your response 'not for publication'.
If you do not wish to submit your information for any reason, please let us know why this is. If you have any concerns about the collection of this information, please contact the people named at the top of this letter.
Please send us your information by 25 April 2008 if possible. We will still make good use of anything received after then, although we may not be able to publish it. Please could you mark the information clearly as being for the PRC or VRC and send it to the appropriate contacts as named at the top of this page.
You are not required by law to supply this information, but we hope that you will be willing to help. You will not be identified or identifiable as the source when we publish the information but you should be aware that we have a duty to consider all requests we receive for information under the Freedom of Information Act and Environmental Information Regulations. Such requests may cover the origin of the data we publish and/or unpublished industry monitoring results. If we do receive such requests we will always discuss the request with the people who provided the information concerned, before responding to it.
If you do not carry out residue testing yourselves and this is carried out by your suppliers, we would be grateful if you would pass this request on to them or provide us with their details so that we can contact them ourselves.
If you are not the person we should contact with this request, or if your details have changed, please let us know so that we can update our records.